Book Image

Azure Resource Manager Templates Quick Start Guide

By : Ritesh Modi
Book Image

Azure Resource Manager Templates Quick Start Guide

By: Ritesh Modi

Overview of this book

Azure Resource Manager (ARM) templates are declarations of Azure resources in the JSON format to provision and maintain them using infrastructure as code. This book gives practical solutions and examples for provisioning and managing various Azure services using ARM templates. The book starts with an understanding of infrastructure as code, a refresher on JSON, and then moves on to explain the fundamental concepts of ARM templates. Important concepts like iteration, conditional evaluation, security, usage of expressions, and functions will be covered in detail. You will use linked and nested templates to create modular ARM templates. You will see how to create multiple instances of the same resources, how to nest and link templates, and how to establish dependencies between them. You will also learn about implementing design patterns, secure template design, the unit testing of ARM templates, and adopting best practices. By the end of this book, you will understand the entire life cycle of ARM templates and their testing, and be able to author them for complex deployments.
Table of Contents (12 chapters)
Free Chapter
1
Section 1: ARM Template Foundational Skills
6
Section 2: ARM Template Advanced Concepts

ARM template structure

ARM templates have six top-level elements:

  • schema
  • contentVersion
  • parameters
  • variables
  • resources
  • outputs

Here's a typical template without any meaningful data:

Let's take a look at each of these elements:

  • schema: Defines the grammar, scope, and constraints for elements that are legal and can be used within the template. It helps to ensure that only elements that will keep the template well-defined and valid are allowed, otherwise it will generate an error. The schema also provides the structure for complete ARM templates, including all resources. The value for the schema is an URI that can be navigated to and it is collection of Resource schema URI's. Each resource has its own schema and they all are referred as sub-schemas. One example is a schema for a virtual machine. The schema for virtual machines is defined at https://schema.management...